All this happiness

"We told each other everything about ourselves, the way lovers do, and even though we knew it couldn’t last, and the thought that in fact it might was frightening because there was also something unbearable about it, all this happiness, so we lived in it as if we didn’t know. The fall had to come, but we didn’t bother ourselves about it – how could we when everything was so great?"

~ Karl Ove Knausgaard, A Man In Love: My Struggle Book Two, 2009

Forty

Yesterday I turned forty yet I don’t feel any different from my usual self. Some say life begins at this age but it just goes on, doesn’t it?

Something that will just be there, always, like tomorrow’s sky

"All I know is that I’ve wasted all these years looking for something, a sort of trophy I’d get only if I really, really did enough to deserve it. But I don’t want it any more, I want something else now, something warm and sheltering, something I can turn to, regardless of what I do, regardless of who I become. Something that will just be there, always, like tomorrow’s sky. That’s what I want now, and I think it’s what you should want too. But it will be too late soon. We’ll become too set to change. If we don’t take our chance now, another may never come for either of us."

~ Kazuo Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans, 2000

Today I woke up at half past four in the morning

Today I woke up at half past four in the morning. It was a struggle. I wanted to sleep some more but I knew that I had to get up to run for at least half an hour before I go to work. So I dragged myself out of bed, drank a glass of water, ate a banana, brushed my teeth, washed my face, put on contact lenses, tied my hair up in a ponytail, changed into shorts and tank top, and put on my running shoes. I was half asleep the whole time. 

It was a dark and chilly outside, and, still very sleepy, I started to run. Listening to a podcast on the director of Get Out talking about his movie somewhat woke me up. A few guys ran past me. I wondered how they could have that kind of energy at so early in the morning. Or maybe I was just running really, really slow.

The end of the world they had built together

"…whatever name they gave their bond they each in their own way believed it required them to protect the other, and so neither talked much of drifting apart, not wanting to inflict a fear of abandonment, while also themselves quietly feeling that fear, the fear of the severing of their tie, the end of the world they had built together, a world of shared experiences in which no one else would share, and a shared intimate language that was unique to them, and a sense that what they might break was special and likely irreplaceable. But while fear was part of what kept them together for those first few months in Marin, more powerful than fear was the desire that each see the other find firmer footing before they let go, and thus in the end their relationship did in some senses come to resemble that of siblings, in that friendship was its strongest element, and unlike many passions, theirs managed to cool slowly, without curdling into its reverse, anger, except intermittently."

~ Hamid Mohsin, Exit West, 2017

It’s the Start of the Year

It’s the start of the year, and I think of the many things I want to write about—my thoughts about the past year, the fantastic books I’ve read, my experiences in Japan, our family vacation in Malaysia—but I’m not yet in the right headspace for that kind of focused writing.  So I’m here, staring at my notes, planning what to write, and trying to regain my ability to think clearly.